31 March 2014

The early animated talkie Mabo as Tokichiro Kinoshita (マー坊の木下藤吉郎, Mābō no
Kinoshita Tōkichirō, 1938) brings together a popular cartoon figure of the
1930s, the young boy hero Mābō (マー坊), and a legendary figure of Japanese history, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), who in his youth was known by the name Tōkichirō
Kinoshita.

Hideyoshi was a great daimyō of the turbulent Sengoku Period. He was the second of three men known as the
great “Unifiers of Japan” because of his role in bringing peace and stability
to the region which was at the time in a state of constant civil war. Hideyoshi was an ideal hero for Japanese
propaganda of the Fifteen Years’ War (1931-45), not only for his role as a
unifier but also because of his hard stance against foreign religion. He notoriously ordered the execution by
crucifixion of 26 Christians in Nagasaki in 1597, known as The 26 Martyrs of Japan.

As this is propaganda aimed at
children, the unknown filmmakers have chosen to focus on the adventures of
Hideyoshi’s youth when he was known as Tōkichirō Kinoshita. He is
played by Mābō – a popular figure of the time in comics and animated
shorts. It is not clear how many Mābō
films were made – at least one other film that survives, Mābō’s Big Race (1936) shows Mābō
competing for Japan at the Berlin Olympics.
The makers of both films are currently uncertain, but it is clear that Mabo as Tokichiro Kinoshita is a more
sophisticated short (either a different animator, or the animator has improved
his skills in the intervening years) than the earlier film. Mābō looks very different in 16th
century garb, but his face is recognisable with his snub nose, big ears, large
eyes, slightly jutting chin and small, high eyebrows.

Having
popular cartoon characters take on other roles is something that began early in
animation. For example, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the precursor
to Mickey Mouse, often takes on
other roles. He’s a fire fighter in Fiery Fireman (1928) and in Yanky Clippers (1929) he’s a
barber. One of my favourite examples of
a popular cartoon character taking on another role is the much later film Mickey and the Beanstalk (1947) with
Mickey replaying Jack in the famous English fairy tale. It’s a clever way to bring together the
popularity of a character with a proven storyline. In the case of Hideyoshi, his exploits as a
child had taken on a legendary status through retellings over the
centuries.

Summary of Mabo as Tokishiro
Kinoshita:

Part I – In Search of a Lord to Serve

A beautifully painted intertitle
tells us that Mābō
/Kinoshita is in search of a lord to serve.
He encounters a fortune teller who offers to tell Mābō’s fortune using a mirror. The soothsayer is shocked to see a
premonition that the boy will one day be the great ruler of them all and he comically
falls onto his behind. Mābō is
unfazed. He pulls the man up using an
invisible rope, scratches his back, and promises the man that he can be his
servant when he becomes lord. The
fortune teller bows and thanks him, but after Mābō has left he realizes that he
forgot to charge for his services.

Part II – Serving Nobunaga Oda

It is winter
and snowing heavily. Mābō hugs himself
to keep warm as he paces back and forth what appears to be the outer hallway of
a traditional Japanese building in sandals.
He takes a pair of sandals out of his robe and warms them with his
breath before putting them back under his clothes. A large man announces the approach of the
Shōgun (Nobunaga Oda, 1534-82). Mābō bows as low as he can in front of the
sandals he has placed for the Shōgun. As
soon as the Shōgun realizes the sandals are warm he imagines that Mābō must
have been sitting on them and becomes enraged and begins to strike the boy. Mābō apologizes and shows the marks on his
chest where the sandals had been kept warm.
The Shōgun’s rage quickly turns to gratitude for Mābō’s
thoughtfulness. He predicts that Mābō
will rise high in the ranks.

Part III – Battle Against Tatsuoki Saitō

The Shōgun
sits in a large room filled with his advisors.
Shibata Katsuie (1522-83) sits
before him and swears to complete his mission.
An upside-down window-washer wipe to a scene in which a series of
workers in costume betting the period are building a castle. One young man is busy hammering, a large man
tills a field, a small man stands upon a giant block of wood working a Japanese
saw (one pulls back to saw rather than pushing the saw forward), while yet
another man works with stone. The scene
works from close shots of the tradesmen at work towards the bigger picture,
finally showing us at the end of the scene that a castle is being built.

It is night
and a man on a hillside is waving a torch like a signal. Tatsuoki
Saitō (1548-73) sits astride his horse and orders his men to crush
Nobunaga’s castle. Saitō’s men attack
and set the castle ablaze. Cut to the
Shōgun, who is angry at Katsuie’s failure and asks who will build his castle
now. Mābō begs for the opportunity to
prove himself. He even promises to
finish in only 3 days.

Mābō asks a
samurai (not sure who this is but they have clearly met before) and his clan
for assistance building the castle. The
film then makes a startling jump into modern imagery. A sign indicates that the Kinoshita Company
building is now building the castle.
They are using modern technologies such as parachutes delivery supplies,
nails being fired into place with a machine gun, mechanical arms paint and
stamp shapes – in seemingly no time at all the castle is already three stories
tall.

Saitō
attacks again but this time he is met with resistance. Mābō walks confidently into the action,
seemingly unaware of a man with a sword hiding behind a tree. The man attacks, but Mābō ducks laughingly
out of the way. He is spun onto the
giant lap of the great warrior Mābō has at his command, who spanks the man
thoroughly. A line up of what looks like
tanks with legs line themselves up to await the attack of Saitō’s men on
horseback. Mābō’s men shoot at them like
WWI soldiers in trenches – I am not sure how realistic this is. While the Japanese did advance quite a bit in
their use of guns during this period, their matchlock guns would not have been
able to reload with such speed (See: Note 1).
They certainly would not have been able to shoot dead a whole field of
horses and riders as they do in this scene.

Cut to Mābō
standing regally and fanning himself, delighting in his victory. The newly built castle still stands – with
even its scaffolding untouched. The
scaffolding is removed and marching band music begins to play. Mābō’s warrior stands with his troops – all in
traditional gear but standing on guard like a modern army. Mābō raises his arm and shouts “Okey dokey!”,
the men salute him back by raising their arms and shouting “Oh!” thrice.

Then,
another surprise – the camera suddenly shifts right and we see a cameraman and
director filming the action. “Okay!”
shouts the director. Mābō looks straight
at the camera and removes his wig to reveal his real hair. “Minna-san, sayonara!”, he bids the audience
farewell and bows his head.

Discussion:

The first
two-thirds of Mabo as Tokichiro Kinoshita
is a perfectly delightful jidaigeki
(period piece) for kids, with slapstick comedy elements such as fortune teller’s whiskers slapping
him in the face or Tokichiro pulling a pretend rope to set the fortune teller
back on his feet. It abruptly changes
into propaganda the moment Mābō’s plan to build the Shōgun’s castle.

It seems to
me that the third section of this film is very loosely based on the tale of the
building of Sunomata Castle in 1566 on the banks of the Sai River opposite
Saitō territory in what is today the city of Ōgaki in Gifu Prefecture. The castle is popularly known as Sunomata
Ichiya-jō – “Sunamata one night castle” because the castle was reputedly built
by Toyotomi Hideyoshi over
the course of one night. Historians have
suggested that it is more likely that a façade of the castle was built facing
the river to give the impression that the castle was already built. Strategically, Hideyoshi wanted to surprise
the enemy and to strategically place his men at a high vantage point where they
could spot the advance of Saitō’s forces (See: Note 2).

The change
from jidaigeki to modern propaganda
is not only signalled by the change in technology, but also by the music. During the first two-thirds of the film, the
music is traditional but it abruptly changes to military music of the marching
band variety. The main propagandistic
aims of the film are multifold: to have children emulate Japanese heroes and
their samurai warrior spirit, to promote the “boy hero” image (see: Note 3), to
promote the war effort on both the home and war fronts, and to emphasize the
greatness of modern Japanese technology.

The film
fascinatingly does not even bother to hide its propagandistic nature; in fact,
it even emphasizes it with that reveal of the cameraman and the director. If the audience had any doubt that this
message is aimed at them, it ends when Mābō breaks the fourth wall and
addresses the audience directly at the end.

There are
some subtle linguistic clues that America is not yet the official enemy at this
point in the Fifteen Years’ War. These
take the form of Americanisms used by Mābō addressing the soldiers with
“okey-dokey” and the director saying “okay” instead of “cut” at the end. It made me wonder when Japanese director’s starting using the word “cut” (カット/katto). The 1930s were a time when terminology for
cinematic technology was still in flux, but I’m pretty sure “cut” was adopted
fairly early.

2.
Harada, Minoru原田実. "Toyotomi Hideyoshi Built Mino-Sunomata
Castle in One Night!! 豊臣秀吉は美濃墨俣に一夜城を築いた!!" in The Truth of Outrageous Japanese History and Lectures on Falsified
History in Academiaトンデモ日本史の真相 と学会的偽史学講義. Tokyo: Bungeisha, 2007, pp. 29–42.

3.
A discussion of boy heroes in comics and animation used to
promote imperialism can be found in Chapter 2 of Michael Baskett’s The
Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan, Honolulu:
U of Hawai’i P, 2008.

25 March 2014

Many early
animation characters like Krazy Kat and Popeye got their start in newspaper
comic strips. There was a similar trend
in Japan, due in large part to the fact that many early animators – such as Ōten Shimokawa and Jun’ichi Kōuchi from the satirical magazine Tokyo Puck – were comic artists.
One of the early popular comic
strip characters to make the transition to animation was the young boy Mābō (マー坊).

Two Mābō
shorts appear on disc 4 of Digital Meme’s
excellent box set Japanese
Anime Classic Collection. The first
of these is the 1’44” short-short Mabo's
Big Race (マー坊の大競争/Mābō no
Daikyōsō, 1936). The animator,
director, and production company for the film are not currently known. Digital Meme presents the film with an organ
soundtrack composed and performed by Jōichi
Yūasa (湯浅ジョウイチ) in the typical style of a silent film
accompaniment. The film has not been
digitally restored so the film has many scratches due to wear and tear and
patches of light and dark due to the film’s age.

The
relationship between the animation and comic strips can be seen in the title
card, which reads “Manga: Mābō no Daikyōsō”.
One of the early terms for animation in Japanese was “manga eiga”
(cartoon movie). This strong connection
between comics and animation continues to this day in Japan as most TV anime
series are adaptations of manga.

Without any
preamble, the film jumps right into Mābō racing in the 5,000m event in a
stadium. The boy is tiny next to the
adult participants who look tall and ungainly (and possible female?) in
contrast to the hero of the film. The
other competitors are depicted as stereotypically “foreign” with their chubby
figures (unlikely at the Olympics) and pointy noses and chins. Initially they outrun Mābō with their much
longer legs, but he fights valiantly to catch up with them. He is cheered on not only by people but by foreign
animals (lion, elephant, hippo, kangaroo) and popular American animation
characters (Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat). Just when Mābō reaches the front of the pack,
he stumbles and everyone falls onto him flattening him into a pancake. A man with a body like Wimpy from Popeye
re-inflates Mābō using a bicycle tire pump attached comically to the circle in
the centre of the flag on Mābō’s shirt. Soon, Mābō is floating in the air like a
helium balloon. He flies off after his
competitors, spinning as he goes, and before long he is flying by the person in
first place, who appears to be skipping as if he (or she?) thinks he has it all
in the bag. The animals in the crowd
laugh as Mābō picks up speed and he crossing the finish line in first place –
slamming into a board which stops him, then deflates him with spikes that
emerge from the boards as if by magic.

The Japanese
flag rises on the centre pole, flanked by two Olympic Games flags. People cheer and wave Japanese flags in the
audience. Next up, it’s the pole
vault. Mābō’s competitor knocks down the
bar on his first run, but Mābō sails over the bar with ease. In his second try, Mābō runs into trouble,
but his pole becomes anthropomorphic and aggressively shoves him over the pole
and into first place again. The image of
the Japanese flag-waving flags repeats and the film ends abruptly on a close up
of a standalone Japanese flag.

It seems
likely that this film was made to promote nationalism in the run-up to the 1936
Olympics in Berlin. Many animated films
made during the Fifteen Years’ War (1931-45) were made for such propagandistic
purposes from Noburō Ōfuji’s
silhouette animation The National Anthem: Kimigayo (国歌君か代/ Kokka Kimigayo, 1931) to the infamous Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲/Momotarō no umiwashi, 1942). Mābō was one of many boy heroes used to
promote imperialism during the war years (see Note 2 below). The propagandistic message of this film is
quite tame compared to that of Momotaro’s
Sea Eagle, but it is still flag-waving clear. The “foreign” characters are not country specific
but ridiculous in contrast to cute and nimble Mābō, and the film takes every
opportunity to showcase the hinomaru.

It is
unlikely that Disney, the Fleischer brothers, and Pat Sullivan were aware of
the cameos of their iconic cartoon characters (Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Betty
Boop, Felix the Cat, respectively). This
film was clearly only intended for domestic consumption. Furthermore, later films like the
aforementioned Momotaro’s Sea Eagle,
demonstrate that Japanese wartime animators had no qualms about appropriating
American cartoon characters for propagandistic purposes. (Read
my review of Momotaro’s Sea Eagle
to learn more.) In Mābō’s Big Race, America
was not yet the enemy so Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Betty Boop, and Felix the Cat
are merely signifiers of the mostly Western crowds that would be in attendance at
the XI Olympics.

From a
scholar’s point of view the film is significant for the way that it demonstrates
how a very short, cartoon can be an effective propaganda tool. It is certainly subtler than the much more
overtly didactic Disney shorts Education for Death
(1943) and Der Fuehrer’s Face
(1943). The film amuses with slapstick
humour, while at the same time squeezing in as many patriotic symbols as
possible. It has also been made in an economic way with the use of cutouts for action and the repetition of shots.

1. The
popularity of Mābō is attested to by Peter B. High in his book The Imperial Screen: Imperial Film Culture
in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931-1945, Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2003, pp.
473-4).

2. A discussion of boy heroes in comics and
animation used to promote imperialism can be found in Chapter 2 of Michael
Baskett’s The Attractive Empire:
Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan, Honolulu: U of Hawai’i P, 2008.

03 March 2014

The school
year is coming to a close in Japan, which means it’s time for Tokyo University of the
Arts (aka Geidai) to celebrate its latest cohort of graduates. Every spring, Geidai does a series of
screenings and events to showcase the works of its students, in addition to
commemorating the graduating class with the release of a DVD (links to previous
DVDs at bottom). The 2-year graduate programme
has had much success at international festivals with many of its graduates
including Atsushi Wada (In a
Pig’s Eye, The
Great Rabbit), Saori Shiroki (MAGGOT,
Woman
Who Stole Fingers), and Ryo Okawara
(Orchestra, A Wind Egg),
among many other talented artists.

The fifth cohort
has been given the title GEIDAI
ANIMATION 05 GO, and features a diverse range of animation styles from
pastel on paper to stop motion. Things
kick off this coming weekend in Yokohoma (March 7-9, 2014) with two 60-minute programmes
of graduate films and one 60-minute selection of works first year
students. On Friday at 4pm, there will
also be a Talk Event with writer-director Sanao
Katabuchi (Black Lagoon, Mai Mai Miracle, Sherlock Hound) while Saturday will feature a Talk Event with Noburo
Ofuji Award-winning animator Shigeru
Tamura (The Glassy Ocean / Ursa
Minor Blue / Phantasmagoria).

The
following weekend (March 15-21), the showcase moves to Tokyo Eurospace for a
week of screenings and events. Some of
the featured events in Tokyo include legendary animator Gisaguro Sugii (Night on the
Galactic Railroad, The Life of
Gusukou Budori) in conversation with animation specialist Ilan Nguyen, who teaches at Geidai and
innovative animator Yasuhiro Yoshiura
(Pale Cocoon, Time of Eve) in conversation with Geidai professor Mitsuko Okamoto. Some evenings with feature chats with the
programme’s key mentors: Okamoto, Koji Yamamura
(Franz
Kafka’s A Country Doctor,Muybridge’s
Strings), and Yuichi Ito (Knaycki, NoRabbits’ Minutes).

The best
news of all, for those of us not lucky enough to be in the Yokohama – Tokyo area
this month, Geidai is hosting a livestream on USTREAM this weekend.
Full Schedule and programming information can be found at on the official website.